Congress leader H.K. Mahesh has alleged that the delimitation of wards in Hassan City Municipal Council area by including villages on the city outskirts had been done to give an advantage to the BJP, the party in power in the state.
Addressing a press conference in Hassan on Thursday, Mr. Mahesh, who contested for Hassan Assembly seat twice, said the boundaries of the existing 35 wards had been redrawn to include the new areas. The draft notification of the delimitation showed that the wards, which were earlier represented by members belonged to minority communities, had been divided ‘unscientifically’ to benefit the BJP.
The wards which were once represented by Muslims, Dalits and a few other castes had been divided and the areas had been distributed among other neighbouring wards. “This is done to benefit the BJP, which is known for dividing people on the basis of caste and religion. If the officers had done delimitation of wards, they would not have done like this. It seems Hassan MLA Preetham Gowda got this done according to his wishes”, he alleged.
Mr. Mahesh said the Congress party had filed objections to the draft notification of delimitation and sought the Deputy Commissioner to look into the objections seriously.
Referring to Mr. Preetham Gowda’s statement that he would not join the Congress, but remain in the BJP throughout his career, Mr. Mahesh said that in the past Mr. Preetham had approached H.D. Kumaraswamy, when the latter was the Chief Minister, intending to join the JD(S). Similarly, he had met D.K. Shivakumar, when the latter was Minister for Water Resources, and expressed his wish to join the Congress.
